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The Path to Sainthood:

A Guide to Researching Saints from the Eastern and Western Christian Church

This guide is intended to assist the researcher with finding information and images on Christian Saints from both the Eastern and Western Church. It is important to note that many early saints will be found in resources for both the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Church and should be compared. The following print resources and databases are located at the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library, University of Virginia. The resources included in this guide are only a sampling of those available.

Print Resources:

Holy Bible, Revised Standard, Jerusalem Bible, King James Version, Vulgate, New English Bible
(FA-REF BS191.A1 1953, FA-REF BS192.A1 1970)

James, M. R. The Apocryphal New Testament
(FA-REF BS2832.J3 1924) The most trusted collection of apocrypha. Especially useful for researching the history of important figures in the Catholic Church.

Oxford Dictionary of Saints ( FA REF BX 4659 .G7F23 1997)
This volume provides brief biographies of the most important saints concentrating particularly on English and Celtic saints.

Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (FA REF DF 521 .O97)
The dictionary was produced by a team of 100 Byzantinists and was intentionally limited to 5,000 entries with only the category of Byzantine emperors being comprehensive. The chronological period is defined as 4th century to 15th century A.D.

The Golden Legend (FA REF 4654 .J334 1969)
First written by Father Jacobus de Voragine in 13th century Genoa, this collection of selected saints lives was the most popular book in the Middle Ages after the Bible. It is extremely useful when researching saints from the Western Church.

The Penguin Dictionary of Saints (FA REF BX 4655.8 .A8)

Databases:

Index of Christian Art - The Index (often known as the Princeton Index) records works of art in 17 different media types, without geographical limitations, produced from "apostolic" times to 1400 A.D. The original archive is organized into two tiles, one a collection of more than 200,000 photographs with textual data; the second, a subject file providing a thematic index to the photographs. It indexes over 26,000 subjects in Christian Art and includes bibliography for each work of art. "Among the holdings is the largest reference collection of Crucifixion scenes, saints, and personifications in existence." Some of the textual material has been put online, however, there are few images available at present. The online version has 150 searchable categories of information.

(IMB) International Medieval Bibliography - Covers Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in the period 400-1500.

(BHA) Bibliography of the History of Art - Indexes and abstracts periodicals, catalogs, essays, and more; subjects include all aspects of the visual arts, architecture, and design in the post-Classical western world.

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Online Resources:

Eastern Orthodox:

Wabash Center: Guide to Internet Sources for the study of religion and theology. This page links to several sources for both the Eastern and Western Church. It is an extensive site and useful for many facets of study of religious study.

Eastern Church Web sites: Maintained by Princeton, this site offers links to information regarding all of the Eastern Churches divided by country. Within each country/region one can find information on churches, universities and other web sites. devoted to the study of the Eastern Church.

Saint Nicholas Russian Othodox Church-Dallas, TX. A webpage devoted to Eastern Orthodox Christian Theology. Includes information on Saints' Lives.

Saints Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church: Lives of the Saints from the Greek Orthodox Church. Also includes writings from selected saints.

Western Church:

New Advent-Catholic Encyclopedia: Possibly the best Internet

Catholic Online: Saints and Angels: Offers the "Saints Index", an A-Z list of Saints in the Catholic Church. Each listing gives the dates of the Saint, the feast day, and a brief history.

Patron Saints Index:"This site has information on topics with patron saints, and profiles of those saints. Profiles have portraits, biographical information, areas of patronage, prayers, links to related sites, readings, etc. It's heavily cross-indexed, and there are several ways to access the information, none of which require frames, image maps, applets, or scripts." (taken from homepage)

Lives of the Saints: Offers biographies, links, lives of Saints from the Eastern and Western churches, and general information about Catholicism.

Internet Medieval Sourcebook-Saints' Lives:"This page's goal is to present ancient, Byzantine, and medieval hagiographic original texts - in translation and otherwise - along with basic data on the cult of saints."

Saints, Martyrs and Other Holy Persons: Maintained by the Catholic Information Network (CIN), this site offers the A-Z index of Saints which includes dates, history, biblical references and images if possible.

Images of Saints:

Orthodox Icons: Image collection of various Eastern Orthodox Saints.

Google-Image Search: Enter the name of your saint in quotation marks for best results.

Created by: Jennifer Parker

Contact the Librarian: Lucie Stylianopoulos | 924.6604 | lws4n@virginia.edu

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